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by TheMewsAtTen



Series: Tomorrow [1]
Category: God's Own Country, God's Own Country (2017)
Genre: Boys In Love, Explicit Language, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Smut, One Shot, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 20:27:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13959366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMewsAtTen/pseuds/TheMewsAtTen
Summary: Ever since I first saw this wonderful film, I've had a few fanfic itches I wanted to scratch. One of them is this one - a bit of fluffy sort-of-smut that nestles between Gheorghe and Johnny getting back from Scotland and that lovely scene where they get rid of the caravan, from Gheorghe's POV.





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**Author's Note:**

> I loved how this film worked with silence and body language. But I also feel like the end is a beginning, after which Johnny and Gheorghe will need to learn to communicate with each other if they're going to stay together, so I like the idea of scenes with more conversation than we're used to on-screen. Also, despite how patient and balanced Gheorghe is, I think he will have been left hurt and insecure by what Johnny did in the pub, and that doesn't just go away overnight. I wanted to touch on that a bit in this.
> 
> I've decided he both thinks of and refers to Johnny as 'John'. It just feels more comfortable that way, to me. 
> 
> This is one of several one-shots I plan to publish as part of the 'Tomorrow' series, all of which are about what happens to these two after the end of the film. 
> 
> I'm actually working on a pretty big (by my standards, anyway!) work-in-progress about Toby Hamilton/Adil Joshi from The Halcyon (check out 'Like Love' if you're into that), but feel like it's stuck so I'm hoping getting these ideas down will bring me back into that space a bit too!
> 
> I don't own these characters and am writing for pleasure, not profit.

Gheorghe felt at peace on the coach back to Yorkshire; content just to relax into his seat, basking in the feeling of John beside him, melting into him. 

Johnny Saxby, who had been so remote, so reluctant to touch, rested his head on Gheorghe’s shoulder, nuzzling his cheek against him from time to time as if he were trying to reassure himself that Gheorghe was definitely there, sitting next to him, as if he still couldn’t quite believe that coming to get him had really worked.

Gheorghe tried not to think too much during the journey, holding John’s heat in the crook of his neck, soothed by that familiar scent of cigarette smoke and wool and outdoors that was just his John and no one else, rocked by the movement of the coach as it carried them both back to the life they were about to start trying to share with each other again. 

There hadn’t been a plan before Gheorghe left, and there wasn’t one now. The difference now was that he knew they _needed_ a plan if this was going to work out. 

These moments, going back to the farm together, were all comfort and relief, but soon there would need to be conversations and decisions. Gheorghe was patient and devoted enough to know that it would be worth it, and worldly enough to know it wouldn’t all be as easy as this.

When they did finally get back to the farm it was the middle of the night. Deirdre insisted she _hadn’t_ been sitting up waiting for them since John had called her to let her know they were coming back. The fact that she had eggs on the boil and bread ready to fill them both to the eyeballs with buttered toast before ordering them to bed was, she said, ‘just a bit of luck’.

If there were going to be any tense stand-offs about them sleeping together under the Saxbys’ roof, it looked like they weren’t going to start tonight.  

“Get to bed and get some rest, the pair of you. Can’t tend the beasts dead on your feet,” she said to their backs as she chivvied them upstairs. The question of Gheorghe staying in the caravan never arose, and he suspected he already knew how John would have reacted if it had.

He felt strangely warmed by Deirdre’s blunt, unceremonious welcome. He knew now that the tone he had taken for hostility when he first arrived on the farm was actually a breed of grudging fondness. The Saxbys were so alike in that way; affection made them uncomfortable, so it tended to emerge as grouchy efficiency, as if they were annoyed by their own feelings. It was that thing in John that had seemed like it was beginning to shift, like he was starting to become easier to reach through words and touch, until what had happened that night, in the pub . . .

When they closed the bedroom door behind them, John looked almost as nervous as he had in the cold light of that yard in Scotland. John knew he was thinking about that night - Gheorghe could tell he knew, just by the way he was breathing - and the silence made the dimly lit room feel hot and heavy. 

John sat at the end of the single bed. It would have to serve them both, at least for now. He rubbed his face with his hands until his skin was flushed and sore-looking. 

Gheorghe sat down behind him, legs apart, bracketing John with his thighs, laying the weight of his head in the valley between his shoulder blades and winding his arms around his waist. He felt John loosen into his touch, just for a moment, before he turned around and pushed Gheorghe back gently so they sat on the bed, face to face. 

John stared resolutely at a point on the wall behind Gheorghe, eye contact still a balder intimacy than he could manage sometimes. Gheorghe had learned that about John; sometimes looking away gave him the courage he needed to say what was true. He’d heard people say that avoiding eye contact was a sure sign of a liar. Gheorghe knew from experience that that wasn’t true at all. John could tell the truth while looking away. And he could lie straight into your eyes if he wanted to. 

“Missed you,” he huffed out weakly, his red-rimmed eyes set in dark circles in his pale face. 

“I am here now,” Gheorghe ran his thumb over John’s cheekbone.

“Know I’m no good at all this. The talking, like.”

Gheorghe got up, beckoning to John to stand. John complied, looking disbelieving and numb. 

“I missed you too. Without you I was not happy,” Gheorghe slowly slipped off John’s shirt, sitting him back on the bed to remove his shoes and socks, standing him up again and undoing his fly, each movement light and careful. “And you do not _need_ to talk.”

“Want to. Want you to know . . .”

“Hmm, I want to know . . .” Gheorghe kissed John, his breathing hot and damp and broken, “. . . that this, you are sure that this is . . . I am what you want? You do not want me to be . . . _different_?” 

Gheorghe knew his English had been pretty good when he’d arrived, and that it had got better very quickly over the last few weeks. But, now, he felt _it_ \- that uncomfortably familiar sensation of not having the words for the way he was feeling. 

He wanted to say that he worried he was too soft, too gentle, not rough or exciting enough. To tell this precious, beautiful, vulnerable miracle that taking care of him made him feel better than anything else ever will again. That the first time John let him kiss him he nearly came just from that simple, astonishing press of lips, that he lay awake that night just listening to John breathe and smiling to himself. That watching the first time John came on top of him, a shocked look on his face as if something had just been ripped from him, shook Gheorghe with so much affection that he doubted the solidity of the ground beneath him. That John was relief to him. Not just the relief of shooting his load after a long day’s work, but relief like rain when it freshens a humid day, or that first drink of water when you’re so thirsty you can feel the pinch of dryness on your ribs, or hot bath water on sore muscles. Relief like _home_.

His hands still working at John’s clothes, Gheorghe’s stomach swooped deliciously as he realised that John was slowing _him_ down, making their kiss deeper and slower, moving Gheorghe’s hands from his fly, lifting his own to remove Gheorghe’s shirt, his touch reverent, confident, as if he’d understood him, understood it all, without a word being spoken.

“No,” John breathed. “I don’t want you different. Want _you,_ like you are. Kept thinking ‘bout how good you are. Gentle. Kept thinking about first time you kissed me. I were scared. That’s why I . . . why I did . . . what I did, that night. Thought you were going away. And you made me happy. Made me feel . . .  fucking _safe_. Then I thought you were going away. Ain’t that I’m saying it’s an excuse, like. Still shouldn’t‘ve done it. Wanted to prove to myself I hadn’t lost _me_ , that this, _us_ , hadn’t changed _me_. But it had. And I made you go away anyway.”

Gheorghe held John’s face in his hands, chasing his fleeting gaze until their eyes locked. “I cannot share you. This, it cannot work if you ask me to share you. You understand? John?”

John brushed his lips against the inside of Gheorghe’s wrist, touching at the pulse point with his tongue, his eyes squeezed closed as he heaved a long, ragged sigh. “Yeah. Can’t undo what’s done, I know I’ve hurt you. Know you deserve better. Can only tell you I’ll never do that again. I thought . . . really thought I’d not see you again.”

“I am here now. And here, I will stay, if you promise not again. No more.”

“I promise. I promise you. I promise you,” John repeated, pressing his forehead to Gheorghe’s as if he were trying to share his thoughts with him through their skin.

John went back to removing Gheorghe’s clothes, kissing and nipping at the skin of his neck. Gheorghe was so hard he ached, and had to stop himself from groaning with relief when John undid his fly and pushed down his trousers and underwear, freeing his cock. He took a deep breath, trying to remind himself that he really only _felt_ like he was about to go mad with need. “We shouldn’t. Your father. _Deirdre_ . . .”

“Reckon that cat’s out the bag already, to be honest,” John chuckled.

“The _cat_?” asked Gheorghe, confused.

“Don’t matter, it’s just an expression, means she already knows, thinks we’re . . .” John whispered with his rare, wide, wicked grin. “ _Please_. I need to be close to you. I don’t mind if you don’t want to, _you know_ , but . . . even if it’s just . . .”

“Just?” Gheorghe knew he was probably being stubborn; a tease, even. He knew this was John’s way of asking to be _held_. But after everything that had happened, it was something he knew he needed to hear.

“Just . . . even if it’s just you laying with me. I just . . . need that. Need you near me.”

Gheorghe felt the weight of all of his emotion pressing at his chest as he finished undressing John, pushing back against the memory of a time, just hours ago, when he had thought he’d never get to do it again, letting John set the pace now, and remembering how it felt to have to slow him down, to make him stop and breathe and _feel_.

It was slow, and it was deliberate and heated. The press of their hardness and hot, bare skin together said that it was holding and closeness but that it was a quenching, too, of a thirst that had started the first night they were apart; all kissing and licking and gentle biting and relearning each other. Gheorghe let it happen willingly, remembering the way they moved together, the way John’s breath shallowed when he pressed his cock into Gheorghe’s body, Gheorghe burying his face in John’s shoulder to stifle the sounds that he always seemed to pull from him so effortlessly.

It felt like they had never fucked so attentively, so thoroughly before, and when Gheorghe came it was a shattering and a remaking of something inside him that he couldn’t name.

He heard John grind out a broken “Oh, God, _fuck_ ,” as his body arched on top of him and he came with a shudder.

They lay there afterwards, on their backs, side by side, panting, grinning like fools.

Gheorghe took a deep breath. He knew he could wait to say it; he knew he probably _should_ wait, that John could panic, that he didn’t want him to feel ambushed. But he also knew, without a doubt, that he couldn’t go another step down this path together without John knowing how he felt. “I could share you, if I did not love you. It is because I love you that I cannot share. And I am not going away. I love you. And I do not know if that’s how you feel about me, and it is OK, it will be OK, if it is not. But it is how I feel about you. And I think that I should have told you that. Before.”

“Fuck,” John sobbed thickly. “Course it’s how I feel about you. Would’ve let you walk away if it weren’t.” He stared down at his weather-worn hands, quickly lifting one to wipe away the tears making tracks down his temples towards their pillow.

Gheorghe pulled him towards him so that they lay on their sides, facing each other, cupping John’s jaw delicately. “I should have told you before. And . . . I should have told you, you are . . . the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

Johnny rubbed the back of his neck, sniffing and blushing. “Soppy get,” he smiled shyly, looking everywhere but into Gheorghe’s eyes. 

“Thank you, for coming to find me.”

“Thanks for coming back. Stay. Stay with me. This . . . you belong here, y’know? You can be . . . you can have a home here. With me. Don’t know why you want to be with me, but . . . just stay, and be with me.”

Gheorghe ran his fingers over John’s lips, over the shell of his ear, through his hair. “Yes. Because you are kind. And you are brave. And sexy. And you have a . . . _very nice cock_ ,” he whispered, licking John’s lower lip with his tongue before kissing him deeply.

“Right. After my body, are you?” John smirked, barely pulling away.

“I love your body, yes. Because I love _you_.”

Gheorghe’s breath caught as John suddenly looked straight at him, his big grey-blue eyes tearful and wide and earnest, and looking unflinchingly into Gheorghe’s own. “I love you too. Really, fucking . . . love you, so much,” he growled. “And we’ll need to clear the caravan. First thing. Wanna get it towed out tomorrow.”

Gheorghe nodded. John bit at his thumbnail and smiled a little. There would still be wordless moments.

They would definitely need a bigger bed. Probably some more wardrobe space at some point. They would need to work out living arrangements that worked for everyone - Deirdre wouldn’t be cleaning up after them, Gheorghe wouldn’t want her to, John would have to pull his finger out. He had no idea how Martin felt about it all, or how much he even really knew about the way they felt about each other.

That drunk bigot who’d started on at him in the pub wasn’t the only thug in town, and people would talk. He suspected that John’s sexuality had always been a badly-kept secret, but settling down with a Romanian farm hand? Gheorghe knew too much of the world to think no-one would accuse him of getting his feet under the table for the worst possible reasons. 

 _Settling down_ , he thought with a smile, his insides glowing.

And he worried about John hurting himself if he kept drinking so much; about whether he would ultimately be enough to make John truly happy. There were a thousand things that would need to get sorted, and all while making sure the farm didn’t collapse around them.

They’d start tomorrow. For now it was enough for Gheorghe just to watch John slip into sleep, to watch his own calloused fingers gently stroking John’s cheekbones, his eyebrows, his jaw, the touches saying it’s OK and I forgive you and I love you and you’re safe.


End file.
